Left In Lowell

Regarding our employer-based health care “system” in the US, I just wanted to point out one paragraph in a recent post by Blue Mass Group’s Charley on the MTA (bold mine):

Put it this way: It’s impossible to have an employer-based health care system when employers don’t want to hang on to their employees for most of their lives. With lifetime employment, the employer has a significant interest in keeping the employee healthy and productive, reducing costs throughout a lifetime. With the instability of the contemporary labor market, health costs are a hot potato to be passed off on someone else as quickly as possible. And some of those potatoes — people, actually — get dropped.

I had never thought about it that way, but it’s true. The employment scene has shifted dramatically over only a couple generations, but our health care system has not. And of course, this is one reason why my husband and I have been without - both of us are in non-traditional jobs…him as a “contract” IT employee (until recently), and me being self-employed. We make too much to qualify for MassHealth or any number of social programs, while at the same time struggling just to live and pay bills - making health care a “non-necessity” comparatively. However, we all really know how necessary health care actually is.

We’re lucky - six years of relative good health (minus one accident which required 7 stitches) for us both and now it looks as though we will probably be able to maybe afford some sort of health care now that my husband has been hired (at least, the employer pitches in 50% - it could be better, but it’s better than nothing). But how many more people have to fall through the cracks before we decide this is a problem our society should solve?